It is actually painful for me to watch the hopeless train wreck that Motorola has become. Once a strong number-two in the world of cell phones, the company that invented the modern cell phone has finally dropped to fourth place in global market share.
That's the word from investment bankers Goldman Sachs, as quoted in this AP story (via BusinessWeek) and it continues to be bad news for American mobile consumers. As I've said before, Motorola is the only North American company making a broad range of mobile phones, and they tend to take our quirky market more seriously than the foreign players. The US rarely gets the top technologies from Nokia, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson first, if at all. Motorola's death makes the US a little bit more of a mobile tech backwater.
Another story, in Fortune, cites unnamed sources in the Asian publication DigiTimes as saying that Motorola is now fifth, but I'm more willing to trust Goldman Sachs' word on the record.
While North America has strong smart phone contenders in RIM, Palm and Apple, the vast majority of phones sold today are still the humbler models produced by Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson, among others.
Motorola's organizational disaster shows no signs of abating. Their mobile phone unit is sitting on the sales block, and I've heard no word about a buyer. The mobile phone division doesn't even have its own chief. They're trickling out handsets that aren't awful - the new ROKR E8 has gotten pretty good reviews - but they don't seem to have a leader, vision or strategy that could help them vault back into prominence. I have a vision for Motorola (to focus on voice, Linux, and under-served markets), and I can also suggest a leader, but they don't seem to be listening.
Motorola will release its latest humiliating set of quarterly sales results on July 31.
Mixx It
Digg It
Stumble
More...
July 22, 2008 5:29 PM
It really is sad to watch. Motorola was once such a pioneer in consumer mobile communications, and they've all but fallen off the face of the industry it helped create. And yet I'll keep rocking my Razr2 v9m until I find a handset to replace it! Please, Motorola! Give me a reason to believe in you!
July 23, 2008 3:00 AM
As a die hard Moto MD(mobile device) employee, all I have to say is wait. I've seen a lot of cool phones that we have coming out in late 2008 and 2009.
July 24, 2008 6:14 AM
Bet the bean counters had more to do with Moto's market share slide than the company's creative folk.
Just another company brought to it's knees by accountants who have no idea about anything than adding up a few numbers.